permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [SANET-MG] Organic development in Bhutan - research opportunity
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2010 07:13:43 +1100
From: Paul Kristiansen <paul.kristiansen@UNE.EDU.AU>
Organization: UNE
To: SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU

 -- Seeking graduate researchers in search of PhD project to monitor 
Samdrup
Jongkhar's shift to organic farming --

The Samdrup Jongkhar Initiative is a civil society project in south-eastern
Bhutan designed to foster ecologically friendly development in harmony with
the government's 'Gross National Happiness' (GNH) development philosophy
that seeks to balance sustainable economic development with environmental
conservation, cultural promotion, and good governance. A centre-piece of the
Bhutan government's GNH policy is to shift the entire country to organic
farming - thus becoming the first country in the world to be 100% organic.

The overall purpose of the Samdrup Jongkhar Initiative is to raise living
standards in Samdrup Jongkhar rapidly and establish food security and
self-sufficiency, while fully protecting and enhancing the natural
environment, strengthening communities, promoting Bhutan's unique culture,
stemming the rural-urban tide, and fostering a cooperative, productive,
entrepreneurial, and self-reliant spirit.

We seek well-qualified and highly motivated graduate students with good
research skills and a passion for organic agriculture to join this exciting
project. Ideally, we will have a multi-disciplinary team capable of
monitoring impacts on soil, crop yields, farm economic viability, rural
living standards, and more. As a local, grassroots, civil society-based
development initiative, the Samdrup Jongkhar Initiative cannot afford to pay
such graduate researchers. However, every effort will be made over the
proposed three year organic agriculture monitoring time span to assist these
researchers to manage the modest living costs and arrangements in Samdrup
Jongkhar.

The Samdrup Jongkhar Initiative constitutes an unprecedented opportunity to
monitor the systemic transition to organic agriculture in a subsistence
agriculture economy in a developing nation in a remarkably systematic and
comprehensive way. Controls will be established in nearby regions with
similar conditions to make it possible to compare systemically the Samdrup
Jongkhar transition to organic farming with conventional farming methods.

If you are interested in undertaking such research and have the capacity to
start work soon, please send a 2-3 paragraph summary of your interest and
qualifications, along with your CV, to Ronald Colman, Ph.D, at
colman@gpiatlantic.org

Ronald Colman, Ph.D
Executive Director, GPI Atlantic
colman@gpiatlantic.org